


From God's Perspective

by Dracoduceus



Series: Smooth River Stones [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Non-explicit mention of torture, Nonsexual Nudity, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Suicidal Ideation, background anahardt, discussion of brainwashing, the many forms of guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22736725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: McCree thinks about the events that led up to where he is now: detained as Overwatch's prisoner and the handler of his brainwashed husband.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Series: Smooth River Stones [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619776
Comments: 12
Kudos: 113





	From God's Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a [song/skit by Bo Burnham by the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnxReU9XYNQ). Originally it was just a working title because I was drunk and listening to Bo Burnham at the time, but there are a few lyrics that I think are fitting:
> 
> My love's the type of thing that you have to earn  
> And when you earn it you won't need it
> 
> I'm not gonna give you love just 'cause I know that you want me to  
> If you want love then love's gotta come from you
> 
> Anyway, this was inspired because _so many_ people asked about what things look like from McCree's perspective, especially during the "Why can't you look at me?" scene at the end of chapter 5. This takes place between that chapter and the end of chapter 6 where Zarya brings Cyberninja to visit McCree.

_No, please, no!_

_What are you doing?_

_Help! Help!_

Whenever he closed his eyes, he could hear their cries. Funny that he’d developed a conscience in his old age.

McCree shifted on the narrow brig cot. He caught a whiff of his own scent—stale sweat, unwashed human, the smell of blood from the failed mission he had been on with Cyberninja—and grimaced.

What a joke.

Hadn’t he been on the run for…fuck, however-many years? How often had he showered in the wilderness?

Or back in the Deadlock Gang? Yeah, Ashe was a prissy bitch and put cleanliness at high priority, but sometimes when they were out in the Gorge, they didn’t see a drop of water outside of their canteens for days…and they weren’t about to waste such a precious commodity on _bathing_.

So why did it matter now?

The thoughts of bathing, of the neutral not-quite-smell of the blandest, most generic—and most importantly, _cheap_ —soap that Winston bought for the base at least covered the wails of tortured souls that continued to torment him.

Dirt and sweat and blood were ground into his pores. To get truly clean, he’d probably have to steam it out.

Thoughts of steam rooms sent a pang in his heart. Unbidden, he remembered the times that they had gone as a team. They teased each other for their nudity or lack of; they teased that there needed to be enough steam that they couldn’t see each other.

Zarya and Hanzo would compare Japanese hot springs to Russian saunas; Soldier: 76 reminisced, in the way that old people sometimes did, about the saunas in Finland. He didn’t think anyone listened to the old soldier, so he wasn’t sure anyone figured out why Finland had been his favorite.

Closing his eyes, he tried to pull together a memory if only to fill the time. He remembered the boards beneath his ass; they were uncomfortable but varnished prettily and slick with the steam. He had put one of the towels between his ass and the wood to make it at least a little more comfortable.

Hana had yelled at him for “man-spreading”, complaining that she didn’t need to see his junk. He had only shot her a finger-gun, making her roll her eyes. Laughing, Reinhardt had reached out and poured another dipper of water over the hot rocks, filling the room with steam again.

The air was heavy and it almost felt like drowning. McCree remembered wondering if anyone had ever downed in a sauna.

Winston and the omnics had been the only ones to decline the offer; everyone else was piled in the sauna in various states of undress—even Genji, though Ange halfheartedly scolded him about getting moisture in his delicate systems. Only a few were fully naked; most either had a towel demurely over their laps or wore swimsuits.

Ana was the only woman fully unclothed and she lay stretched out on one of the empty benches, her head pillowed on one of Reinhardt’s enormous thighs. He remembered thinking that she looked like an enormous cat, her eye closed and her lips curled upwards very slightly as Reinhardt ran his fingers over her forehead and along the edges of her headscarf.

McCree had the feeling that if they had been alone, Reinhardt would have been finger-combing her long silver hair. She had never been very traditional—he had many memories of her long black hair lying in a neat braid down the back of her blue coat—but now she seemed more modest, opting to keep most of her hair tucked into the scarf.

It was a nice look on her, McCree remembered thinking. And who was he to judge if she showed her hair or not? Even if her choice to do so came so late in life?

He and Hanzo had gotten her a set of head scarves for Christmas one year, but he couldn’t remember if it was before or after that memory of the sauna. For some of them, they had embroidered designs into the edges with Zarya's help. They weren’t by any means works of art or up to being sold, but Ana had seemed touched by them nonetheless.

She seemed particularly amused by the one with a row of syringe-darts that zig-zagged along the edges. It was ridiculous, had taken them forever to do, and Ana probably would never wear such an ugly thing, but McCree knew that she was at least very amused by it.

McCree sighed and opened his eyes. The ceiling was dark and unbidden, his thoughts turned to The Reaper, to the miasma-creature he had become. There were too many eyes, too many teeth in too many mouths; when he returned to his two-legged human-shaped form, he had to wear a mask to hide his true monstrous nature.

At first, he had wanted to believe that The Reaper was a Doll, just like Widowmaker, Sigma, and…Cyberninja.

He heaved a sigh, thoughts of his former mentor derailed for Cyberninja.

For Hanzo.

But no matter what he wanted to believe, he knew that Cyberninja wasn’t Hanzo, not anymore. Maybe he never would be. Maybe he was beyond fixing.

_An almost-perfect specimen_ , he had heard Medusa say once. _An almost-perfect Doll._

What Cyberninja had that Widowmaker or Sigma lacked, he didn’t know. Perhaps Medusa was talking about the dragons. Even now, he could feel one of them twisting over his chest, swirling like a miniature vortex over the rings around his neck.

He lifted his hand and found the simple chain, the two rings. Their edges pressed into his sternum with the weight of his hand but his touch couldn’t soothe the dragon.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to it, as he so often did. He didn’t know if the dragon could hear him, much less was willing to accept his apologies. Perhaps he was only imagining the presence of the dragon. It wouldn’t surprise him, given how tightly he still clung to Hanzo—to Cyberninja.

His breath hitched and McCree squeezed his eyes shut in a vain attempt to keep back the tears that threatened to fall. Cyberninja. _Hanzo._

It was like a knife twisting in his heart every time he had to look into his husband’s blank eyes, to know that this wasn’t the man he married—that Talon, that Moira and Medusa and the other doctors of the Dollhouse Initiative had scooped out everything in him that had been human.

True, they had missed something—a root, a seed, something tiny that was beginning to grow back—but…Cyberninja would never be Hanzo. It was a truth that he knew but tried not to think about.

It didn’t stop him from loving him, fool that he was. He loved Cyberninja, the shadow of his husband, with all of his crooked heart and it was eating him away inside. Was this what it felt like to become a Doll? To have something so thoroughly scooped out of you? To be so broken?

But he wasn’t a Doll. He still had whatever it was that made him human.

Or perhaps not. McCree had, after all, traded that part of his humanity to have Hanzo back, even if he was just an empty shell of a man.

He dug his fingers into his hair, tugged sharply as if ready to rip it out. The bite in his scalp did nothing to clear his thoughts.

_“Why can’t you look at me?”_

Fuck.

It was only a matter of time. He thought that he had done a pretty admiral job of pretending…

McCree heaved a heavy sigh. His stomach gurgled even though the thought of food was enough to make him nauseous.

He remembered the original conversation, of course. An argument between Genji and Hanzo, shortly after he had joined; before he and Hanzo had officially gotten together, while they had still be circling around each other.

Back then, Hanzo was very much like Cyberninja: wary, closed off, almost unfeeling. He bottled everything up and only released it with the help of alcohol and the drunken charm of a scruffy cowboy.

Problem was, was that every time he bottled something up, it just built up pressure and one day it had to explode.

The other problem was that Genji had been doing the same.

“Why can’t you look at me?” Genji had screamed at last. It had stopped all conversation in the rec room and everyone had turned to stare at the two of them. In some ways that made it worse for Hanzo, had turned the blade in his ribs simply because others were now witness to what—in Hanzo’s mind—should have been a private interaction.

But Genji had never been one for subtlety, for all he was a damn ninja.

He could keep secrets, that much McCree knew—you couldn’t be in black ops without that ability—but somehow his own personal secrets were always open-book. And, in Genji’s mind, so were Hanzo’s.

Hanzo’s shoulders had hunched; this was the wrong way to go about it. McCree had been torn between stepping in and letting Genji get the words out, let the pressure release. They had both needed to hear those words out loud as much as Genji had needed to say it.

“Look at me, Hanzo.” Genji had continued, his voice softer after his first explosive cry. “I’m here—I’m not a ghost from your past, I’m not a ghost of your guilt.” When Hanzo hadn’t looked up, his eyes fixed stubbornly on his lunch that he no doubt no longer had any appetite for, Genji had slammed both hands on the table. It had made everything jump; more than a few glasses had tipped over, spilling their contents all over.

Cracks had formed on the surface of the table; they had looked like dark spiderwebs beneath Genji’s hands. Winston had been furious that Genji had destroyed property. It didn’t matter that there were dozens more tables that their small team could use—it had been the principle of it.

“Look at me!” he had screamed.

“And what should I see?” Hanzo had asked, voice low and cold. “The mistakes I had made carved into your body?”

Genji had seemed surprised. “And what mistake would that be?” he had demanded.

“ _The mistake of not cutting deeper!_ ”

Hanzo had fled and McCree had chased after him. It had taken him almost an hour to find him and then he didn’t reveal himself, having found him with the Bastion unit in the garden.

“I shouldn’t have,” he had heard Hanzo say as he peeked around the corner at the two of them. They were both sitting in Hanzo’s favorite meditation spot, an area that gave McCree headaches. Gardenias were nice and all, but an entire wall of them? All in bloom? No thanks.

Bastion trilled and McCree had never figured out of Hanzo actually knew what they were saying or just extrapolated from Bastion’s body language and tone.

“I was just so angry,” Hanzo had whispered. He had sound so broken that McCree’s heart had hurt for him.

Bastion whistled again, a long string of notes that rose and fell like conversation.

He had heard Hanzo sigh as he turned to leave and give them their privacy. “You’re right…” His voice had faded as McCree walked quickly away.

McCree sighed as he turned his thoughts away from Hanzo.

His stomach ached as he rolled on his side, yawning with hunger. He deserved the treatment, even though he knew that his jailers had simply forgotten about him. Overwatch wasn’t used to having prisoners.

He wondered how long he’d waste away like this. When the screams of the dead, dying, and tortured eventually returned and dragged him down with them.

_Why can’t you look at me?_ Genji, and then Cyberninja had asked.

“Because I’m a coward,” McCree said to the dark ceiling of his dusty, forgotten cell. He imagined that he was talking to Cyberninja, or maybe a version of Hanzo’s past. “Because I’m so desperate, so selfish, that I would do anything to keep you…even if death might have been far more merciful for you.”

He wondered if Hanzo would have forgiven him, or if he would have begged for death.

Closing his eyes, McCree decided that he probably would have. He knew that Hanzo never wanted to be under the thumb of another person ever again, to be so utterly controlled that he was little more than a marionette to be played with at the puppeteer’s whim. So even more so he was guilty of forcing Cyberninja into a life that—if he ever fully remembered his past as Hanzo—he would hate.

No, _hate_ would not be the right word.

He would be sickened, would be furious. This was everything that he had sought to escape. This, or something like it, was what had led to his deadly fight with Genji.

McCree dug his hand into his hair, feeling sick. He bit back a sob.

This wasn’t solitary but it damn sure felt like it. Trapped in a forgotten part of the base, left alone because nobody remembered—or cared—that he was there? He was a loner by nature but this was worse than being trapped out in the desert, in the middle of nowhere with no human contact. The walls didn’t change; he didn’t feel the sun or moon or wind or rain on his face, his clothes, his skin.

This was silence, pure emptiness.

This was a torture that was in some ways worse than anything else he’d ever endured. Here he was haunted by silence…and by the memories of screaming.

Worse was when his mind recreated the sounds of Hanzo’s screams, the same recording that Talon had sent to him. The ones that had whittled him down, made him weak, and allowed Talon to sweep him away.

“What would you have done?” McCree asked the ceiling, not sure who he was talking to. Athena wasn’t in this part of the base—it had only been spruced up to be livable for him, at least until they were able to figure out what they wanted to do with him.

_Why can’t you look at me?_

He rolled on his side, grunted at the ache in the stump of his arm. His pillow smelled little better than he did, after over a week of his use of it. It was probably moldy too, having likely been brought up from one of the abandoned storage rooms.

At that point he wondered what would actually be the thing to kill him: hunger, thirst, mold, or Genji.

The thought of Genji’s hate choked him. It’s nothing less than what he deserved but it was salt in the wound. They had been friends—or something like it—for years.

They had survived the Rialto Incident together, had survived Overwatch and Blackwatch and the fiery fall of both. In many ways, they were as close as brothers, if only brothers-in-arms.

And McCree had betrayed him.

He knew what it must look like to Overwatch; he knew what Akande boasted. That McCree had commissioned Cyberninja.

That McCree had given Hanzo over to Talon.

That McCree willingly betrayed Overwatch in favor of Talon.

Oh, but that last was true, at least partially. He had betrayed Overwatch, but it had been for Hanzo.

It had been for Hanzo, perpetuating a life that he would hate more than anything. McCree laughed bitterly.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself and rolled to look up at the dark ceiling. “This is all kinds of fucked up.”

Down the hall, he could hear voices, muffled by distance. He impatiently scrubbed his face and took a deep breath. Light began to grow, as if someone was walking with a lantern.

He opened his eyes and blinked against the light, which felt too bright after his exile in the twilight of the brig. Immediately he could recognize Zarya’s imposing silhouette and…

“Zarya,” he hissed, sitting up quickly. “Zarya, what are you doing? He’s not supposed to be here.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope it was worth it and you all enjoyed it. Originally this was going to be a "test" (where I just let myself write without much of a planned agenda) but I liked the way that his thoughts jumped around so I kept it. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope this answers some of your questions. Let me know what you think!
> 
> You can find me here or on Twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
